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James King

Recording Artist · Active 1989–2016 · Martinsville, Virginia · Also a musician
Contemporary Bluegrass Classic Country

James King — known as “the Bluegrass Storyteller” (a nickname attributed to Dixie Hall) — was one of the most emotionally powerful vocalists in traditional bluegrass. His ability to inhabit the story of a song and deliver it as if he had lived every word made him a fan favorite on the festival circuit for decades, and his Rounder Records catalog under Ken Irwin's production remains essential listening.

  • Born James Elroy King in Martinsville, Virginia; raised in Cana, Carroll County, Virginia. Father Jim King was a fiddler and tenor vocalist who had appeared on Roanoke television with Don Reno and Red Smiley's Country Cousins. Uncle Joe Edd King played with Ted Lundy of the Southern Mountain Boys.
  • Teenage musical tastes leaned toward Alice Cooper, Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, and Steppenwolf before hearing the Stanley Brothers for the first time in 1974 and becoming a devoted convert to traditional bluegrass.
  • Began performing gospel music at his Pentecostal Holiness church at age 16. Served in the U.S. Marine Corps before relocating to Wilmington, Delaware, where he started a band with Ted Lundy's sons T.J. and Bobby Lundy.
  • Featured vocalist in Ralph Stanley's Clinch Mountain Boys during the 1980s — an apprenticeship that tightened his connection to the Stanley sound that would define his own work.
  • Self-titled solo debut on Webco (1985), followed by It's a Cold Cold World (1989, reissued on Pinecastle as Webco Classics Vol. 2).
  • Signed with Rounder Records in 1992 through Dudley Connell's introduction to Ken Irwin. These Old Pictures (Rounder, 1993) featured members of the Johnson Mountain Boys (Connell, Tom Adams, David McLaughlin) and the Lynn Morris Band (Marshall Wilborn, Tim Smith). Named Breakthrough Album of the Year by Bluegrass Unlimited.
  • IBMA Emerging Artist of the Year nominee 1995 (and eventual winner for the James King Band in 1997).
  • Rounder catalog continued with Lonesome and Then Some (1995), Bed by the Window (1998), Thirty Years of Farming, Bluegrass Storyteller, Gardens in the Sky, and his Grammy-nominated final Rounder release Three Chords and the Truth (2013).
  • Co-founder and central lead vocalist of the bluegrass supergroup Longview, alongside Dudley Connell, Marshall Wilborn, Glen Duncan, Joe Mullins, and Don Rigsby (1997). Longview's self-titled debut earned IBMA Song of the Year for “Lonesome Old Home” (1998). Later Longview lineups added J.D. Crowe, Ron Stewart, and Lou Reid.
  • Signature songs include “Bed by the Window,” “Echo Mountain,” “Coldest Day of Winter,” “Jerusalem Tomorrow,” “She Took His Breath Away,” “Thirty Years of Farming,” “Second Handed Flowers,” “Garage Sale,” and “A Few Old Memories.”
  • Inducted into the Virginia Country Music Hall of Fame in 2014. Ken Irwin called him “one of the most intuitive singers in all of bluegrass.”
  • Died May 19, 2016 at Lewis Gale Hospital in Salem, Virginia after a long battle with liver disease, at age 57. His daughter Shelby Ann predeceased him in 2012.

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